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Promoting discussion and collaboration in social and cultural evolution
Browsing All Posts published on »March, 2013«
Science on Screen: DUNE
Frank Herbert’s DUNE is probably the most popular science fiction novel ever (over 12 million of copies sold). It has everything – a complex and dynamic main hero, great villains, neat ecology (planetology!), philosophical and religious insights, and (what is particularly fascinating to me) a well-structured social world. I have written before on this topic […]
Douglas Jones. Modes of Interaction and Social Glue. A Commentary on Harvey Whitehouse
March 24, 2013 by SEF Editor
Whitehouse convincingly argues for a distinction between two kinds of social glue – identity fusion and social identification. In his earlier work he related these to two memory systems, semantic and episodic (Whitehouse 2000). Here I take a different tack by briefly reviewing two modes of social interaction familiar to linguists and sociologists – the […]
Karl Frost. Ritual Theories, the Sacred, and Social Control. A Commentary on Harvey Whitehouse
March 22, 2013 by SEF Editor
I am quite enthusiastic about Whitehouse’s research program, an impressive body of empirical work in a variety of cultural contexts and using multiple methods, exploring diverging modes of religiosity and ritual practice and their implications for social structure. I’m delighted to have been asked to respond to his post. I find Whitehouse’s divergent modes hypothesis […]
Jonathan Lanman. Two Stars and a (Fourth) Wish: Ritual Theory and the Challenges of Fusing Humanity. A Commentary on Harvey Whitehouse
March 18, 2013 by SEF Editor
There is much to admire in Whitehouse’s ambitious programme of research. There is the testing of a theory that offers greater precision in describing and explaining social cohesion. There is the formulation of an account of psychological kinship that can serve as a reminder that cultural and evolutionary approaches can work together to produce compelling insights. […]
Gordon Ingram and Karolina Prochownik: The Notion of “Identity Fusion” Raises More Questions Than It Answers. A Commentary on Harvey Whitehouse
March 16, 2013 by SEF Editor
In his target article Whitehouse describes a fascinating and extremely worthwhile program of research. We understand that this research is in its early stages, and so we are not too concerned that at the moment, his exposition of it raises many more questions for us than it answers. We offer up these questions, not really […]
William Swann: How can social glue foster cooperation rather than competition? A commentary on Harvey Whitehouse
March 14, 2013 by SEF Editor
In an audaciously ambitious article, Whitehouse proposes a solution to three of the world’s perennial problems: (a) predicting, preventing, and resolving civil wars; (b) channeling social cohesion for the collective good; and (c) mobilizing a global response to economic inequality and environmental threat. The solution, he contends, is to buttress our understanding of something he […]
Harvey Whitehouse. Three Wishes for the World
March 12, 2013 by SEF Editor
If you had three wishes to change the world, what would they be? Perhaps you would like to put an end to war? Reverse global warming? Or eliminate extreme poverty? The key to solving all these problems is glue. It doesn’t come in a tube. It’s a very special adhesive – the kind that holds […]
Starving the Enemy
March 10, 2013 by Peter Turchin
I recently finished reading Perfect Health Diet: Four Steps to Renewed Health, Youthful Vitality, and Long Life by Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminets. It’s a great book and I recommend it to all, who are not afraid of delving into the rather technical issues of health and diet. What I particularly liked about the book is […]
The Cliodynamics of Cliodynamics
March 3, 2013 by Peter Turchin
Marc Parry, the author of the Chronicle article on Cliodynamics, reposted the Google Ngram graphs from my last blog on The Percolator. There are about a dozen replies there. One says, “Interesting article sort of but the comments are even more amusing.” These comments remind me of an encounter I had at a Columbia University […]
March 28, 2013 by Peter Turchin
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